Dumb Money: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees (Previously Published as The Antisocial Network)

Written by Ben Mezrich

Narrated by Fajer Al-Kaisi

From the author of the book that became the iconic The Social Network movie, here is the definitive take on one of the wildest stories ever --  the David-vs.-Goliath GameStop short squeeze, a tale of fortunes won and lost overnight, marking an unforgettable event in financial history.

Bestselling author Ben Mezrich offers a gripping, beat-by-beat account of how a loosely affiliated group of private investors and internet trolls on a subreddit called WallStreetBets took down one of the biggest hedge funds on Wall Street, firing the first shot in a revolution that threatens to upend the establishment.

It’s the story of financial titans like Gabe Plotkin of hedge fund Melvin Capital, one of the most respected and staid funds on the Street, billionaires like Elon Musk, Steve Cohen, Mark Cuban, Robinhood co-CEOs Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, and Ken Griffin of Citadel Securities. Over the course of four incredible days, each in their own way must reckon with a formidable force they barely understand, let alone saw coming: everyday men and women on WallStreetBets like nurse Kim Campbell, college student Jeremy Poe, and the enigmatic Keith “RoaringKitty” Gill, whose unfiltered livestream videos captivated a new generation of stock market enthusiasts.

The unlikely focus of the battle: GameStop, a flailing brick-and-mortar dinosaur catering to teenagers and outsiders that had somehow held on as the world rapidly moved online. At first, WallStreetBets was a joke—a meme-filled, freewheeling place to share shoot-the-moon investment tips, laugh about big losses, and post diamond hand emojis. Until some members noticed an opportunity in GameStop—and rode a rocket ship to tens of millions of dollars in earnings overnight.

In thrilling, pulse-pounding prose, DUMB MONEY offers a fascinating, never-before-seen glimpse at the outsize personalities, dizzying swings, corporate drama, and underestimated American heroes and heroines who captivated the nation during one of the most volatile weeks in financial history. It’s the amazing story of what just happened—and where we go from here.

Previously published as The Antisocial Network.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hachette Audio
• Release date: Sep 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781549112591

Ben Mezrich

Ben Mezrich graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991. He has published twelve books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Accidental Billionaires, which was adapted into the Academy Award-winning film The Social Network, and Bringing Down the House, which has sold more than 1.5 million copies in twelve languages and became the basis for the Kevin Spacey movie 21. Mezrich has also published the national bestsellers Sex on the Moon, Ugly Americans, Rigged, and Busting Vegas. He lives in Boston.

Reviews for Dumb Money

[tjsjohanna_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I learned a little bit about how short sales work - and I felt some sympathy for the "little guys" who saw their fortunes halted with the short sale guys got bailed out. It's the wild west on Wall Street.

[daniel5estes · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As I write this, coming up on the 2-year anniversary of the Superstonk event Ben Mezrich's The Antisocial Network captures so thoroughly and beautifully, the internet presence of the GameStop superfans lives on. I don't have a sense of how big this group still is but their driving life force appears to be some combination of wanting to recapture the short squeeze magic of January 2021, anger towards the rigged financial markets, solidarity with other 'diamond hands' aligned in opposition against the big banks, and undoubtedly those patient stock holders not wanting to sell their GameStop shares at a steep loss.

[m_k_m_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Does an excellent job of explaining some complicated financial terminology and presenting many different views of what happened during this year’s GameStop short squeeze. But it also suffers from a lack of conclusion and a whole lot of padding. Too often the book pursues irrelevant colour and leaves potentially significant threads on the floor.

I don’t care what someone thought of their roommate’s decor or whether they were a track champion at high school. I do care about what this event means for markets in the age of social media or how it ties into wider popular attacks on traditional power elites (the squeeze happened in the same month as the Capitol riots for Pete’s sake).

The book gestures to these things but clearly feels itself unable to answer them, in which case you have to ask what the point was to writing the book in the first place. The Big Short gets mentioned a lot and the title itself refers to The Social Network (based on one of the author’s own books); too often The Antisocial Network feels like source material in search of a screenwriter to pull it into shape.